Chicken Drama

I have to tell ya, I never thought I would have a blog post titled - "Chicken Drama" but here we are....no really, here I am holding a chicken and a baby. Ha - what a sight :)

OK, on to the drama....

In mid July around 6:40am each morning we started hearing a loud crow coming from our backyard. Not an ideal sound to hear when you live in a neighborhood in the city, not a farm and you are under the impression that you had 3 female chickens.

Now let me tell you, figuring out whether you have a male or female chick is kind of a crap shoot to begin with. There are no obvious, um... "parts"... if you will, to confirm the sex of the baby chicken. What there is, is a lot of voo-doo-like tricks that are done to guess. In our case the guy held each chick in his hand and dangled a piece of copper wire on a string over the chick to determine the sex. Umm...yeah....maybe we should be thankful we don't have a backyard full of roosters.

The crowing culprit - Lou our Barred Rock chicken. In this post I described Lou as the undeniable leader of the group. When the crowing first started we dug deep into Google to find out if it was possible to have a crowing hen. Turns out, it is. From what we read, in small back yard flocks with only hens, it is not uncommon for one of the hens to take on the role of alpha and crow. We hoped this was the case, but even if it was we couldn't have a crowing hen, alpha or not. So, we decided to do what any sane-minded person with 3 chickens, one of which crowed and two children would do - we got another chicken. Actually we got 2 more.

Meet Dolly

& Pearl

Our thought - if we brought in a new chicken that was a bit older then it would be the alpha and Lou would stop crowing. So, we got Dolly - a Lavender Americana. Dolly is a year old and was already producing eggs when we got her. Because Lou, Dot and Pip had been together since day one we didn't want to introduce Dolly to the group alone so we got Pearl at the same time. She is a Silkie and a few weeks younger than the original 3. 

We quickly learned that a pecking order is real. The new chickens did not receive a warm welcome from the group. Maybe I'm naive, but in my mind, the girls would invite them in, show them the nesting boxes, Lou would stop crowing and the 5 of them would live happily ever after, producing an array of colored eggs for us. WRONG. The OG chickens were not happy to meet the new chickens and were down right mean to them. Especially Lou. Dolly, our hopeful alpha was clearly intimidated by Lou and quickly owned her lowly position on the pecking order.  So now we had chicken fights AND a crowing chicken. Sadly, we were forced to make the hard decision to send Lou to live on a farm in Tifton, GA. It was a bummer to lose her, but the flock as a whole as been better since. Now, a few months later all 4 chickens are friends, no one crows AND Dolly started laying eggs!

It took her some time to get acclimated, but once she did we started getting these pretty blue eggs just about every other day.

Once we started getting eggs we took right to Amazon/Etsy and got ourselves all set up with half dozen boxes. Once the other girls start laying too, we may go with the full dozen size containers, but for now, how legit do we look?

Life with our backyard flock is pretty sweet right now. It's fun to check the nesting boxes each day for an egg and the excitement in finding one never gets old! We look forward to the multi-colored eggs in our future, but for now,  we are just happy everyone is getting along and no one is crowing.

All photos are my own. 

We Have Chickens + DIY Chicken Coop

As we approached the finish line for the shed we took a little detour down the road of, "hey, lets get chickens!" It's really all my sister's fault. We were at a family reunion back in April and she showed us this instagram account of this girl who lives in Greenville, SC that had the prettiest chickens. Who even knew chickens could be pretty?! Honestly, not me, but even better - these pretty chickens produced pretty eggs and lived in the most charming coop. She could tell we were intrigued so she pushed further and said, "y'all should build a coop and get chickens too!" We laughed it off, but the seed was planted and the next thing I knew we were laying in bed perusing chicken breeds and fantasizing about our kids growing up in the middle of Atlanta with a piece of the farm life right in the backyard.

Lucky us, there was enough space on the right side of the shed to add a little coop, plenty big enough for 3 chickens.

Just like the shed, we started with 4 posts in the ground to set the perimeter of the structure.

The plan was to create a chicken run, 5 feet x 5 feet. The run would have 4 walls covered in chicken wire with a door on the front that locks to let the chickens out or keep them safe inside.

Once the chicken run was complete Brent built the coop. The coop sits on top of the run and this is where the chickens sleep at night and lay their eggs.

In the photo above, do you see the 3 little compartments on the front of the coop? Those are the nesting boxes where the chickens will leave the eggs. Brent put a flip down door to cover this portion for easy access to the eggs.

Both the coop and the nesting boxes got the same roof detail as the shed and as you can see from the photo above the roof line of the coop matches that of the shed as well. The chicken wire was installed next. The specific chicken wire was a point of discussion because I thought it might be cool to do something different here. Maybe a black chicken wire in an unusual shape? I was initially opposed to the"standard silver chicken wire" because I didn't think it would go with the vibe of the space aesthetically, but upon more research Brent found that the standard silver chicken wire was really the best because the weave was tighter which kept varmints out. According to a lot of research and feedback from fellow chicken owners, weasels, rats and snakes were the main cause of death for chickens. So, we went with the standard stuff and I'm so happy we did. Not only does it give us peace of mind that the chickens are safer this way,  but aesthetically it just blends in, and I realized after the fact, the lack of  statement it offers was exactly what was needed.

The open counter space you see in the photo above is my planting bench!  We just used 2 x 8 boards and sat them atop the chicken run to create the table. This is definitely one of my favorite details of this addition and one that I have already utilized many times! Brent added 3 holes to the back side of the coop for breathe-ability and I love the charm the little holes with chicken wire bring to this side of the coop. 

Back inside the coop Brent cut a hole in the floor for the trap door. We purchased this door that you can set on a timer to open and close at certain times of the day. The door closes at 9:30pm when it gets dark and opens again at 7:00am. 

Brent built a ladder that connects the chicken run to the chicken coop so the chickens can easily scurry up or down. 

Brent also built a series of perches inside the coop for the chickens to sit on. They like to be up high, so he gave the several options to choose from. 

While Brent constructed the coop, I worked on painting both the coop and the shed. We painted everything the color Kendall Charcoal by Benjamin Moore. I love the color. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say a shed is chic, but........

She is pretty sharp, eh?

We got the majority of the coop built before we brought the chickens home, but it was a few weeks before we could let them live outside full time. A few weeks ago we showed the girls their new home and we feel like they were pretty impressed with their digs. More on the chickens soon, but for now, here's a shot of the girls headed home. 

All photos are my own.